Day Three at Welcome to Rockville

Saturday

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday….supposed to be the biggest day of the event. Mother Nature decided that wasn’t going to happen. However, it happened with still a lot of fun.

As we walked through the Turn 1 gate immediately at the Rockvillian Stage was the first band I wanted to see. The metal band Afterlife. The band that probably promoted themselves the most for this festival that I saw on social media so I definitely had to check them out. Very energetic, the music was totally amazing and great crowd interaction. Awesome way to start the day. They apparently were the headlining band at the camp party the year prior and they couldn’t be more excited to be back.

I decided to try out the Ferris wheel at that point to see what photos I could get from there. I’m afraid of heights but I wanted to do it anyway. You can literally see the entire festival grounds from the top and it was amazing! From there I could see there was a Bud light trailer that you could go to the top of in a VIP sort of way so of course my ass went over there next. Grabbed a Bud Light and went to the top! Of course my favorite thing happened where I met some younger die hard music fans and talked to them about music, favorite bands, who they were there to see, past experiences. They were there to see GNR and super pumped about it. I believe only one of them had seen them prior. We stayed up there making friends up until the set time for Agnostic front was to come on. I ran back over to the Rockvillain Stage. The set started our killer. A circle was starting to form. Everyone was loving it! Then it happened…the dreaded evacuation warning…damn rain and lightning. But It was legit. Totally brutal storm that came through. The ever helpful beer carts were there to save the day for most to pass the time as well as the super fun people next to us who were chatting us up about the weekend. After about an hour and half – two hours they let us out of the cage. While waiting for the reset of set times and bands I went to check out The Pretty Cult tent. Omg I could have spent a fortune there. They had tarot stuff, witchy stuff, gothy stuff! Beautiful dresses and robes galore! Of course I bought something. Then headed over to check out the water slide. A huge line was there to go down the slide to cool off but I opted not to go. Didn’t really dress for it that day.

Photo by Steve Thrasher

At that point I headed over to Space Zebra to see Jerry Cantrell. When he started the Alice In Chains part of his set everyone went insane. And then it happened again….evacuation number 2….back to the grandstands. This one seemed to be much longer. Still make friends and people watched and again the beer carts helped ease the pain.

Once back in again I decided to chill at the Jack Daniel’s tent to watch In Flames from afar at the Rockvillain stage. As I waited for set times to reset to see what was left (In Flames, Stitched Up Heart, Shinedown and GNR at this point) I saw two younger guys carrying an older guy, a very belligerent older guy toward me. I waved them down to sit at my bench. They were a father and two sons. Apparently dad decided to down a bottle of rum in the car before they let us in. They brought him food and I suggested some water as it was super hot and he was passing out. Dad kept telling me he loved his boys and I was talking to him for awhile. He rarely got to go to rock shows since his wife loves country and he was out to party hard. And party he did. They were also there to see GNR.

We decided to make our way over to Space Zebra for GNR, we had about a half an hour wait and I wanted to get a good spot since I’m a short person I saw the GNR logo on the screen and got a little giddy. Never saw them live before. About 20 minutes until showtime….it happened again and for the last time that evening….Evacuation and Show canceled…you could feel the breaking hearts of every fan in the crowd or at least the screaming Fuck Yous that were belted out. It was a long day with some disappointments but I still had a blast and did what I do best, Rock out, meet some new friends and got back to the car before the downpour lol.

See you on day 4: The Finale